Bio Med CentralPage 1 of 2 page number not for citation purposes Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine Open Access Commentary Scandinavian Emergency Medic
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Scandinavian Journal of Trauma,
Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine
Open Access
Commentary
Scandinavian Emergency Medicine – A toddler steadily walking but still not running
Maaret Castrén
Address: Professor of Emergency Medicine, Department of Clinical Science and Education, SÖS, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
Email: Maaret Castrén - maaret.castren@sodersjukhuset.se
I recently read an editorial that reflected upon the past 25
years of emergency medicine [1] The mantra of the
emer-gency medicine field is "you have to know a lot more than
a little about everything" Emergency medicine is
extremely fascinating, but may also be very frightening to
newly graduated colleagues who are just beginning their
careers Scandinavian universities are still not teaching
emergency medicine as a discipline; however, this
obsta-cle does not prevent us from publishing a high quality
journal from which young doctors can read
Another editorial [2] focuses on the development of
intensive care medicine during the past 25 years, stating
"Intensive care has established its identity and is an
acknowledged speciality in medicine" This established
identity is the current goal for the much younger
disci-pline of emergency medicine, of which it has been said: "It
has been small steps in the right direction Some mistakes
but mostly good things" [2] A solid, academic,
evidence-based foundation in emergency medicine will provide the
field with critical protocol and decision-making
knowl-edge We have a good start for an academic platform in
Scandinavia, and The Scandinavian Journal of Trauma,
Resuscitation, and Emergency Medicine (SJTREM) is an
important resource in supporting this development
There are only two professors of emergency medicine in
Norway and one in Sweden, and emergency medicine is
defined as a specific speciality only in Sweden While
Södersjukhuset in Stockholm, the home of the Swedish
professor, has had emergency physicians since the late
1990s, emergency medicine officially did not become a
subspecialty in Sweden until 2006 There are strong
move-ments in both Finland and Denmark toward the same
development, and Norway has begun discussing the need for a defined emergency medicine field In this regard, we
in the Scandinavian countries support each other as best
we can The fact that the president of the European Society
of Emergency Medicine is from Sweden will be helpful as
we try to reach the goal of emergency medicine as a speci-ality A Scandinavian journal is an excellent forum for these discussions
When I began my career approximately 30 years ago, there was no pulseoximetry, CPAP, CT, MRI, or even US, and no thrombolysis or PCI, laparoscopic surgery, GPS or mobile phones I wonder what they will write about in the next 25 years, and I dream about the device that they use in the TV show Star Trek Using this device, doctors would simply scan the patient to receive prompt vital signs, blood results, and diagnoses Simple and easy, no brain work or knowledge necessary But wait, stop! Brain work is the most fun part The fact that you have been able to solve a mystery, such as an unknown diagnosis, and discovered a conclusion or at least a treatment that makes the patient feel better is the best part of the whole profession Reading about the work of others inspires you to work harder and provides new ideas about how to work more efficiently A journal is a good way to inform the world of your work and thoughts, and we need to share this information to become a stronger field of medicine
We have a young but very strong emergency medicine cul-ture in Scandinavia In the field of resuscitation, our tiny countries have performed solid research Together, we have addressed post-resuscitation care as an important, and now well-established, link in the Chain of Survival The majority of research regarding dispatching protocols
Published: 19 August 2008
Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine 2008, 16:6 doi:10.1186/1757-7241-16-6
Received: 14 July 2008 Accepted: 19 August 2008 This article is available from: http://www.sjtrem.com/content/16/1/6
© 2008 Castrén; licensee BioMed Central Ltd
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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comes from our countries An exiting study that
ran-domised patients to an experimental group receiving
adrenalin or another group that did not even receive an
i.v during the resuscitation protocol was recently
com-pleted, and we are all eager to learn of the results Anyone
who works in the field of pre-hospital care has knowledge
of the Utstein formulas This little monastery name in
Sta-vanger serves as a symbol of quality work, and many
papers drafted from Utstein meetings have provided us
with a framework to understand results from studies all
over the world We also have unique patient registries that
allow us to follow our patients from birth until death,
pro-viding years and years of potential data, which is a
gold-mine for epidemiological studies
What will be written about the SJTREM in 25 years?
Hope-fully, it will resemble what Sternbach wrote on the recent
which is that most of the articles in the first issue are
rele-vant to the practitioner today meaning year 2033 for this
youngster By working together as a discipline, I hope that
we can make this wish come true and, at the same time,
make emergency medicine an established part of everyday
medicine in Scandinavia as well as all over the world
Competing interests
The author declares that they have no competing interests
References
1. Sternbach G: Reflections on the Past 25 years in Emergency
Medicine The Journal of Emergency Medicine 2008 in press.
2. Vincent J-L, Fink M, Marini JJ, et al.: Chest 2006, 129:1061-1067.